Taking Propecia? Maybe You Should Stop. There's A Dark Side To This Common Balding Cure.

Pop-quiz, gentlemen: What is more important to you, your hair or maintaining a thrillingly active sex life? Everyone but the most electrifying man in narcissistic entertainment today answered, “Sex. Sex is important to me. God, I could go some sex right now. I don’t even care with who. Or what. I’ll make a f*cking hole in that couch cushion right now and-“

I’m getting carried away. Can you blame me? The very latest in Horrible Surprise Side-Effects news is a trifle hysterical, especially because it pertains to Propecia — a pharmaceutical hair loss treatment otherwise known as finasteride that is super, super common. Odds are 9/10 of your friends are on this stuff. Odds are too that they know the allegedly vague risks. Since its approval for sale circa ’97, Propecia’s carried a smallish warning to this effect:

"A small number of men experienced certain sexual side effects, such as less desire for sex, difficulty in achieving an erection, or a decrease in the amount of semen. Each of these side effects occurred in less than 2% of men and went away in men who stopped taking Propecia because of them."

Which makes anecdotal sense, being that Propecia works by inhibiting a steroid in your body that’s responsible for converting testosterone into 5α-dihydrotestosterone (DHT), which is the hormone that tells your hair to fall out and also helps make you a sexual tyrannosaur.

Unfortunately for that company getting rich off your male pattern baldness (Merck), Propecia has been on the market for 17 years. That’s a lot of time for “less than 2% of men” to realise that those “certain sexual side effects” can be irreversibly permanent. We’re talking widespread reports of impotence, zero libido, reduction in penis and testicle size, and even depression and suicidal thoughts.

Former head surgeon to the Irish Family Planning Association Andrew Rynne claims that Merck know this.

"They know it is not true because I and hundreds of other doctors and thousands of patients have told them that these side effects do not always go away when you stop taking Propecia. We continue to be ignored, of course."

Writing to a Propecia help site (yes, you know it’s legit and bad when there are whole online support groups), Rynne warns that even some men who’ve only been on Propecia for a few months “have unwittingly condemned themselves to a lifetime of sexual anhedonia,” which is where an individual feels no sexual pleasure whatsoever.

"I have spoken to several young men in my clinic in Kildare who continue to suffer from sexual anaesthesia and for whom all sexual pleasure and feelings have been obliterated for all time. I have felt their suffering and shared their devastation," he said.

One such man is 36-year-old British man, Paul Innes. Innes is probably the most public face of ‘post-finasteride syndrome,’ having been so debilitated by a three-month usage of Propecia he founded this website and went public with his claims. He maintains the drug caused him suicidal depression, extreme sexual dysfunction, and ultimately cost him his relationship.

Now there’s a petition to take finasteride off the market via change.org, a charge led by Sarah Temori.

"Many who have taken Propecia have lost their marriages, jobs and some have committed suicide due to the damage this drug has done to their bodies," she said. "One of my loved ones is a victim of this drug. It's painful to see how much he has to struggle just to make it through each day and do all the daily things that we take for granted. No doctors have been able to help him and he is struggling to pay for medical bills. He is only 23."

It’s not just personal conjecture, either — medical science has also had a look at these mounting claims. A study published to the Journal of Sexual Medicine last year noted "changes related to the urogenital system in terms of semen quality and decreased ejaculate volume, reduction in penis size, penile curvature or reduced sensation, fewer spontaneous erections, decreased testicular size, testicular pain, and prostatitis." Many subjects also noted a "disconnection between the mental and physical aspects of sexual function," and changes in mental abilities, sleeping patterns, and depressive symptoms.

Another more recent study this year in the Journal of Steroid Biochemistry and Molecular Biology drove the nail in further, finding "altered levels of neuroactive steroids, associated with depression symptoms, are present in androgenic alopecia patients even after discontinuation of the finasteride treatment."